Camping with Bears

My parents were visiting Bearizona today and it reminded me of this story...

Camping and Bears is almost a given.

But there are many things you need to understand about bears to ensure your, and their, safety.

Before we arrived to camp & hunt one year in Eagle, Colorado, we were told that there was heavy bear activity around the area and that we needed to take extra precautions with our food and clothing. Everyone was to place their trash in the main dumpsters every night and the ranger would pick them up and take them to the main shed across the main road from the campground.

MY RULE #1 with Bear Safety - Leave them alone - usually they are just looking for food. Which you should always have locked up in a bear-tight container and inside of your car.

We had the pop-up and my parents and their friends all had fifth-wheel trailers. We knew they would be fine, but knew that we were just in a tent on wheels.

 

Only a day or two into the trip, one of the friends we had met at the campground over the years of staying there told us to come look at something.

We all went over to their bus, which was converted into an RV. A bear had smelled the food from their refrigerator (which was inside their RV) and tore a hole into the metal from the outside. Now I’m not a scientist, but I think metal is stronger than tent fabric, right? LOL!

This made us all realize the sheer strength a bear has. It also made me start sleeping in the middle of the pop-up. Like that would help me, hah! – it’s only about five feet from the edge where a bear could easily rip through the tent fabric of the bed area! Still... it made me feel a bit safer :)

 

Having witnessed all of this, my mom made sure to tell me to be very careful on the mountain while hunting and to watch out for my dad. She wanted us to stay together and not separate as we have done a bit in the past. I found out from my dad later in the day that she told him the same story, “Watch out for Debbie...” So, understanding the bear activity, my dad and I did just that, stayed by each other during this year’s hunt.

 

One day, we returned to a mountain we’ve hunted in years past. We headed out in the dark and up to about 11,000 feet. This was the farthest we had been away from the camp, but knew that everyone who had hunted this area always saw a lot of elk. As we were heading up in the dark, just before sunrise, my dad had to use the restroom. I held his rifle and he was around the corner by a trough. As always, my eyes are constantly scanning the distance for whatever animal we are hunting, and those we are not, such as the bear that were in this area. With both rifles in hand, I spotted five elk at the top of the hill. It was not a safe or legal shot as they were on the edge of the hill and the sun wasn’t quite up.

But as my dad has taught me, we never want to spook anything out of the area. They may well come back down that mountain later when we are ready and it is safe to take the shot.

After my dad finished his business, he walked over to me. He could always tell when I had a bead on something – he looked in the same direction I was looking, as I didn’t make any movement to hand him back his rifle. I knew the elk were off in the distance now and told him what I had just seen.

Knowing we just saw elk and didn’t spook them, we decided to setup on the opposite hillside. We found a nice area of three good-sized trees in a circle. We setup in between them so that my dad could face one way, looking 180 degrees, and I could face the opposite way, looking the other 180 degrees. Our gear had a nice place to sit in between us, readily available, but not in our way.

 

After sunrise, but still early morning, I turned to the left, just about my cross over point of my dad’s view, and saw something dark and big running through the trees.

To this day I still cannot confirm to you it was a bear, but my eyes have been trained to know animals and what to look for in the wild (my dad noticed it too). This had to have been a bear! Just about 100 yards from our stand.

The feeling was so eerie; only those who have come across a bear in the wild can understand how I felt at that moment. I proceeded to quietly inform my dad, and we both kept our eyes in that direction for quite some time. I can’t say that for the rest of the day I was elk hunting; I was probably bear watching more than anything, especially in that direction.

Of course, this made for a great campfire story that night.

 

The next day, after dinner, we saw other campers gathering around a couple of rows down in the campground. Our friend, Dorla, had broken her ankle and was on crutches that year. So we hoped there was nothing wrong with her. We saw she was participating in whatever was going on there.

It appeared they were really interested in something, so my dad and I headed that way. Much to our surprise, they were all staring at the large bear getting into the trash dumpster! He was no small bear, and after about five seconds I said, “What are we doing here? We should be inside your fifth-wheel, dad.”

 

And, I swear the exact words out of my dad’s mouth were, “We don’t have to run faster than the bear, we only have to run faster than Dorla.” LOL!

Now, I’m sure we’ve all heard that statement jokingly used on television shows and in movies, but when you’re actually in that situation, I felt somewhat safe and yet felt bad for Dorla at the same time.

After a few minutes of watching the bear forage the dumpster, we decided we’d better head back to camp. Of course, when we were around the campfire and told my mom, she thought we were crazy to even go look. Since we knew the bear was in and around the campground, everyone decided to get inside their trailers early that night.

So, back at our campsite, my husband flared up the fire as we were in the last spot on the outside of that row of the campground. We would be the first to encounter the bear.

As I didn’t want to stay outside, I headed to bed, in the middle of our pop-up. 

After a short time, I heard a scary growl. My husband quickly opened the pop-up door and quickly shut it tightly again. He said the bear was just outside our campground and he realized he only had a stick of firewood to protect him. With that said, he stayed in the pop-up and slept with his loaded pistol right next to him. We didn’t even chance walking over to my parents’ campsite to get inside their metal and larger fifth-wheel trailer.

MY RULE #1 with Bear Safety - Leave them alone - usually they are just looking for food. Which you should always have locked up in a bear-tight container and inside of your car.

MY RULE #2 with Bear Safety - Remove any clothing you may have been wearing when cooking and eating at a campfire - bears will smell that and think it's food. And, it's a good idea to keep those clothes with the food, inside your car.

MY RULE #3 with Bear Safety - Always have protection! Whether or not you are a gun person, have something to protect yourself. Again, the bear doesn't want to hurt you (usually), so bear spray is a good option as well.

Moral of the story - you really do just have to run faster than the other person to get away from something as dangerous as a bear.